Hotel Fiction present us with their second EP Enjoy Your Stay which is about following your heart and living in the moment. There's so much to say about Hotel Fiction, but I believe their music speaks for itself. We got to talking about their EP, how they go into music and so much more.
Hi! Thanks so much for answering my questions, how are you? We’re good! We just finished up a tour with The Beaches and headed right to a mountain vacation with our friend Carla afterwards. Feeling rejuvenated and relaxed! For those who are just discovering your music, can you introduce yourselves? We are Hotel Fiction, an indie band from Athens, Georgia. We’ve been writing and recording together for the past three years and going on tours with our close friends. We’ve been all across the East Coast and have traveled as far as New Hampshire, Colorado and South Florida. We like to write about life as we’re experiencing it – previously as college students and now as young adults. How did you get into music? We both grew up playing music as young kids, and both of us grew up with music around the house. We both played and listened to a lot of Beatles and old rock music and learned how to play from our families. How did you go about finding your sound? Our sound is a mixture of both of our musical backgrounds and our current taste in music. Once we got in the studio for the first time we also started finding more of our sound and learning how to talk in terms of production influences. It never really feels like we have a consistent sound we go for…we usually just follow our instincts and try to turn it into something we like. Currently we like to think of our sound as catchy music with interesting melodies that anyone can listen to and enjoy. How did Hotel Fiction start? What made you two want to start a band together? We met in college and both were missing music as a presence in our lives. It felt like we instantly clicked, and we started writing every week together after that. We loved writing and performing and wanted an outlet to do that and we’re inspired by bands in the local Athens music scene. You have your EP Enjoy Your Stay coming out soon, which is so exciting! Can you tell us a bit more about the inspiration behind it? Why did you decide to go with the hotel theme? The “Enjoy Your Stay” saying came from our producer saying it in the studio on one of our first songs "Think Twice." After that, we thought it would be a really cool name for an album or project. We decided to call this EP Enjoy Your Stay because it invites the listener in to sit with these songs and enjoy them as a group. Beyond that, it’s a reminder to enjoy life and your stay on this Earth, wherever you are. Can you tell us a bit more about the inspiration behind Enjoy Your Stay? Enjoy Your Stay is a project about following your heart and living in the moment. It encompasses the range of emotions that we as early 20s adults have navigated over the last few years. Feeling stuck, feeling paralyzed, falling in and out of love, learning to love yourself, and appreciating the deep friendships around us. What was the recording process like for Enjoy Your Stay? We made this EP in our producer’s house in Athens. We actually started this EP three years ago with our song "Allure." It took us recording three different versions of "Allure" over three years to feel like we had the best one. So that song really started the EP. "Monster" was the first song on the EP where we really dove into the production. The synths, gang vocals, guitar tones, and vocal tones really ended up guiding the rest of the project, serving as a blueprint. Our producer Tommy is absolutely incredible and gives so much care and attention to our songs. What was the creative and writing process like for Enjoy Your Stay? Every song process was different, and the writing time periods spanned over three years. We started most of the songs during the early pandemic, and we wrote one in 2019. We’re very inspired by the life happening around us, but this EP includes a few songs inspired more by imagined scenarios than real life. Maybe that’s because during the pandemic all we had were our imaginations. This EP feels special too because some of the meanings of the songs feel more relevant to our lives now than ever. Some of these songs were hard to write and perform because they were so close and true to our lives, and were things we couldn’t even admit to ourselves. But over time these songs have helped guide our year and get closer to who we want to be. I love “Man on the Moon”, can you tell us a little bit more about this track? "Man on the Moon", despite being one of our most upbeat songs, is a metaphor for a struggling relationship. Distance can make someone you love feel like they’re on a different planet, physically and emotionally. It’s bittersweet to hear about a loved one’s adventures over the phone when they are far away. You’re happy they’re having the time of their life but wish you were there to enjoy those moments with them. The few moments together are fleeting, and they are a mere hologram that you can never quite hold onto, ready to disappear into thin air. Living vicariously through their life can lead to resentment, knowing their adventures are the reason they're gone. The song never asks them to come home, and has long accepted the fact that maybe they never will. Was the creative and writing process for “Man on the Moon” different from “I Like You Around”? "Man on the Moon" started with lyrics, while "I Like You Around" started with both music and lyrics almost simultaneously. Jade wrote the words to "Man on the Moon" in class and brought it to the piano later. "I Like You Around," both of us started in Jade’s room with the chorus and guitar riff. "Man on the Moon" was inspired by a long distance relationship, and "I Like You Around" is about wanting to keep the friendships around us close while knowing how fleeting some of them are. What would you say is your main inspiration when it comes to creating and writing music? We’re inspired by both life around us as well as the imagined scenarios we create in our minds! One of my favorite tracks is “Monster.” Can you touch on this track a little bit more? What was the inspiration behind it? How did you go about creating it? Jade: I started writing this over the pandemic when the world felt like it was ending, I started with the chorus and the leading guitar riff and strumming. I really liked it and it felt empowering and made things feel less scary. It wasn’t till I brought it to the synth that it became darker and the verses gave it a sad undertone about feeling disassociated from life.
Jess: Recording "Monster" was a really cool process because it started as Jade’s production project for class. We worked on that demo a good bit and then used that first recording as a blueprint for playing it live. Soon after that we went into the studio with Tommy and had so much fun fleshing out the production and structure of the song. It was one of the longest and most exciting recording processes. Who would you say are your musical influences? Beatles, Bowie, Joni, Killers, Dominic Fike, Remi Wolf, The Strokes, Pink Floyd When creating a song, what comes first? Music, or lyrics? Usually music comes first! For some songs on the EP words came first. "Man on the Moon" was completely written before even putting the words with music. Whereas "Allure" started with a guitar riff and we built ideas around it based on the feeling of the music. Both ways of writing are fun! Could you talk more about the EP artwork? I love it so much! Jade: It was inspired by one of my paintings of a room I had made that me and Jess both loved. I thought paintings and art about spaces were really interesting as a self portrait in a way. The feeling of a room, the walls, all say a lot about a person and who they are. With the Enjoy Your Stay theme we thought it would be cool to make each single a room that coincides with the ideas behind the song. The whole EP is all of the rooms combined on top of eachother, with each side (wall) as a different room. Last question, we love discovering new music! Who should we be listening to right now? Soo many good musicians out there! Some current favs of ours are Sadurn, Men I Trust, Remi Wolf, flipturn, Quinnie, Djo, Bendigo Fletcher, Runner, The Brazen Youth. The list goes on and on!
Keep up with Hotel Fiction!
Listen to "Enjoy Your Stay" here
